


The Gardener's Folly

by greenbirds



Category: The Tripods - John Christopher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbirds/pseuds/greenbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They came across the Long Dark in ships as ponderous as the cold iron asteroids that tumble endlessly on their orbital tracks, and all was as it always had been.</p><p>History is all too often written by the victors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gardener's Folly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyphomandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/gifts).



> I choose to disregard the prequel for this story, as it was written nearly 20 years later and really doesn't seem to me to be true to the spirit of the rest of the series. For those who are fans of the prequel, mea culpa.
> 
> Many thanks to the usual suspect for the beta! :)

They came across the Long Dark in ships as ponderous as the cold iron asteroids that tumble endlessly on their orbital tracks, and all was as it always had been.

There was the hum of the machines and the warmth of the pools, and always (always) the monotonous susurration of the Other Voices in the mind (water against rock, smoothing atom by atom until there is nothing left behind. Here is no rock, but only water.)

For years and decades and centuries they crossed the Long Dark (voices, pools, metallic humming). Unceasing, unchanging. 

They came together in the Pools of Mating, two by two (endlessly interchangeable; all identical) driven by instinct older than thought, or knowing, or self. It was fruitless coupling (lashing of tentacles, splashing of warm water, clouds of pheromones so unlike the gentle ease of the gas bubbles); there would be no budding (no genetic recombination, no precious variation) until they were free of the Long Dark.

Fruitless and unending.

And then the great ships full of whispers began to slow (a deceleration lasting decades, and there were slow creaks and the gentle groan of gravity and metal), and soon there was a warm yellow star, and soon a solar system with nine worlds and sleek gleaming comets, and sooner (soonest) a teeming world of green and blue, circled round about with countless gleaming satellites, each humming (silently) with bright power, each on its own monotonous track, circling and circling until gravity and atmosphere someday claimed it.

As each segment of the globe below spun away from the warm yellow star and into darkness, tiny constellations bloomed to life on its surface; a thousands and millions of points of light.

They pressed three-eyed visages against viewports and stood in front of viewscreens, waving tentacles, and the Other Voices sang with wonder and excitement.

(So different from the Long Dark, they sang. So different from the heavy green monotony of the Home Place. Strange. Beautiful. _New_.)

And soon they realized that whispers rose from the green world, whispers and ghostly images of strange creatures (unnatural, bilateral. Two eyes, two pairs of strange jointed appendages).

No other world had ever whispered. No other world had ever sent its ghosts, or scattered bright jewels of powered light beneath them. 

(The whispers that rose from the green world were not in one tongue, one voice as the People spoke to one another, but in thousands. Endless variety, endless recombination. This too was new.)

And oh, they should have gone away from this place, should have lumbered away in the ponderous great ship and gone back into the Long Dark with only the Other Voices in their minds, for the light of the yellow star was strange to them, and the air of the green world was poison to them. But they had been so long in the ceaseless unchanging stillness of the Long Dark (so long; too long) and the world beneath them called to them. So they went down to its surface in the great walking machines. First one or two, and then dozens and then hundreds, and finally they built themselves tiny oases under soaring domes and went down to the green world (to a strange new garden, wild and full of endless variation in shape and size and tongue and being) to make a new home.

The strange creatures of the green world told stories of sirens, but those on the great ship would not have understood them. Not then, not ever, for sirens were not a real thing and untruth could not exist.

The strange bilateral creatures of the green world fought them, of course, but their flying machines and their bombs and their thunderous rolling heaps of metal were worthless against the power of the People. All of the weapons and the cities of the creatures with two eyes and strange jointed limbs relied on the power of the electron, and the People had long ago learned to defeat it. One tentacle-press of a button and the flying machines fell out of the sky like great dying birds. Another, and the thundering machines stopped rolling. A third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and the great cities went dark one by one (stars fading into nothing).

And there were some of the Other Voices that murmured in dissension, that whispered that the strange creatures with their two eyes and four limbs sent ghosts and whispers and kindled lights in the darkness, and perhaps they should not be treated as unruly vines in a garden pool. (Perhaps they should be spoken to as People, as equals.) But the creatures with their jointed limbs could not be People, because they fought _each other_ as they fought the People in their great walking machines. They did not hear the Other Voices, as sentient creatures did. For all their lights and ghosts and metal trinkets they were animals only.

So the People made Caps of shining metal for them and gave them the gift of Other Voices that they might be happy and at peace, and their garden grew and prospered and was lovely.

In time they learned more of their pets. They had two eyes, and soft fragile skin in shades of white and pink, yellow and brown and red, and they came in two kinds where the People only had one.

(They told story-tales of their beginnings _So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them._. These also were untruths.)

The People brought them into their oases to serve them, and to be admired (endless variation, endless recombination).

The strongest of the _males_ might live in the oases for one or two turnings around the yellow star, but those that the creatures with two eyes called _female_ were delicate and round and lovely, and when they came into the oases where all was too heavy for them (for the environment of the People was as deadly for them as their world was for the People), they sickened and died. They were like the _Tania _vines of the Home Place, which withered when they were taken too far from their home pool, and water from another pool could not save them.__

__Some of the People loved their _females_ \- so different from the People, containing only one sort of gamete - and grieved when one after another they sickened and died, so they put them in the stasis bottles, where rot and decay would not touch them. (Their hair floated around them like the fronds of delicate vines, and their features were still and peaceful.)_ _

__Time passed. The creatures with two eyes heard the Other Voices and were made gentle and happy. The poisoned garden of the People grew greener and flourished and recombined endlessly, and the People went out in their great walking machines to tend it (to prune and shape and fertilize it.)_ _

__For a long time, all was peaceful._ _

__Then came the Time of Upheaval, when the creatures with two eyes rejected the Other Voices, when they rose up and toppled the great walking machines and let poisoned air into the oases. It was sudden, unexpected. Surprising._ _

__(Such things come of recombination.)_ _

__And now the one called Ruki waits._ _

__It is alone, as the creatures with two eyes and four limbs are alone. The Other Voices have all gone. (It is an animal only.)_ _

__It waits in a prison wrought by the creatures with two eyes and jointed limbs. It waits in cold and hideous lightness, and the creatures with two eyes are as kind to it as animals can be._ _

__It waits and thinks alone thoughts._ _

__It thinks about whispers, and beauty, variation and wonder. It thinks about surprise. It talks to the creatures with two eyes._ _

__It wonders if one can be a person without Other Voices._ _

__It tells the creatures with two eyes about the great ship that comes across the Long Dark, and it waits._ _

__Someday (soon, sooner, soonest) the great ship that comes across the Long Dark will begin its long slow progress past the warm yellow star to the green world._ _

__Soon (sooner, soonest) the Other Voices will call out from the great ship to the world beneath._ _

__And they will find Ruki, alone, thinking alone thoughts, with no Other Voices of its own to guide it. They will find the ruins of the great garden, and the oases, and a world full of creatures with two eyes and four limbs who send whispers up to the stars._ _

__And Ruki will whisper to the other voices of the danger of too much recombination, and will join his alone thoughts with the Other Voices on the ship, the ship will turn away and shamble back into the Long Dark, and Ruki will die, alone, thinking alone thoughts._ _

__Ruki waits, knowing its death is coming._ _

__Ruki waits, knowing that the great ship will pass on into endless sameness, taking the Other Voices._ _

__Ruki waits, knowing it will die, but the garden will prosper._ _

__Endless variation. Endless recombination._ _


End file.
